The opposite of "Palestine"

On the graphic reporting of Joe Sakko "Gorage: Safety Zone"

Joe Sakko Comic “Goragee: The Safety Zone, first published in 2000, has become available in Russian localization. In it, Sakko develops experiments at the junction of a journalistic essay and a graphic novel, which had begun in the world fame for Palestine. Eduard Lukoyanov says about how the peculiar sequel to that brilliant book came out.

Joe Sakko. Horage: Safety zone. War in East Bosnia 1992-1995. M.: Bumpniga. Translated from English Lisa Birger

In 1991, the not very successful commander Joe Sakko, who was acutely experiencing the crisis of the thirty years, decided to quit everything and headed his head to the Middle East to return with the graphic report of Palestine, the full edition of which was published in 1996 and deservedly received an American book award (read the review of Gorky).

On the pages of Palestine, Sakko admits that before this trip did not go into the details of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and to the Gaza sector and on the western bank of the Jordan River went for bloody plots, which, as it seemed to him, constitute the essence of real journalism. Of course, he was very lucky that he, not having the slightest idea of ​​the craft of the military commander, did not remain to fertilize the olive grove somewhere near Ramalla. But from a professional point of view, even more success was his uncomplicated look at the causes and course of the war. Having carefully listened to ordinary Palestinians, and active participants in the intifada and the fighter of the IDF, he created a very reliable collective portrait of the region, the suffering of which is still not visible. The artist’s faithful companion in this matter was a healthy cynicism, turning into the humor of the gallows: he saved the book of Sakko from the vulgar peacekeeping pathos, which is sinned by other authors taken as a topic.

Encouraged by the success of Palestine, at the end of 1995, Sakko flies to Bosnia, expecting the signing of the Deyton agreements. Realizing that in Sarajevo there is no material for him, he moves to a much less well -known, but no less affected place - the mountain enclave. There he finds an English -speaking conductor and for four months collects evidence of people who have become eyewitnesses of the bloody stage of the collapse of Yugoslavia. Looking ahead, let's say that success awaits him here: in 2001, the “Horage: Safety zone” will receive an Icener award - the most prestigious from awards in the world of comics. Is it deserved? This time, we are sure, the answer is negative.

To begin with, Sakko, making sure that he was now a professional author with a world -famous name, decided to behave as a professional: he got acquainted with the literature about the history of Yugoslavia and carefully studied the materials that he came across about the causes of the Bosnian conflict - at the end of the book he even gives a brief bibliography, everything is serious. This immediately takes away from the “Gorage” that naive and at the same time sensitive optics to the slightest fluctuations, which was primarily interesting to Palestine. With his knowledge, gleaned from books, he is in a hurry to share with readers.

In the presentation of Sakko, the origins of the war in Bosnia were the following. During the Second World War, the Croatian Ustashi massively destroyed the Serbs, and the Serbian Chetniks equally massively destroyed the Croats. The Slavs-Muslims also fell under the distribution, some of whom gave the oath to the Wehrmacht (either by the will of the editors, or by their own oversight in the Russian translation, the Tomsom of the SS "Hanjar" for some reason turned into a modest "Muslim detachment"). After the war, the Communists blinded a new state from the scattered territories and called it Yugoslavia. With the dictatorship of Tito, nationalist sentiments were suppressed, and then the regime fell, the new tyrant Miloshevich came and the Serbs began to kill everyone around. That's all - after the Srebrenitsa, a more complex picture of events clearly does not suit either the author or his readers. And in this after the years, the second serious drawback, which prevented Sakko from repeating the creative luck of Palestine: obviously, he simply began to keep the future reader in his mind, pretending to be his solvency. So with external similarity, the report of the “Horage” turned out to be the exact opposite of its daring predecessor.

We deliberately emphasized several times that Palestine and Horage Genrerov are precisely to graphic reports, their author insists on this definition. However, the “Horage” actually combines all the stereotypes that the readers who are guided by the comics argue their hostility. This is a dusk plot, dividing the world into black and white without half -tones and, most importantly, completely stilt characters.

There was no trace of the master of the fast portrait, which we admired for reading Palestine. In Palestine, the reader had someone to live with the described tragedy, but not living people inhabit the “Gorage”, but completely caricatures: one of the unkempts of the ancient Soft Roka hits, the other constantly begs American jeans, and when he finally receives the cherished “levis”, is horrified that they are not “Orijinal”; Another companion of Sakko is a charming Turkish journalist, the charm of which is that the author finds her charming. The only real person here is Edin's guide, but his image will be hopelessly ruined by the author, who discovered an unexpected passion for the melodrama.

Needless to say, the Serbs here are completely represented by a faceless biomass, shooting from the night home of peaceful citizens, a kind of Uruk-Hai tribe, bred in the island for a more effective extermination of elves. However, one Serbian character (not counting Miloshevich, Karadzhich and Mladich) still appears in Sakko to announce: his weak old man, fans of aimed at the fact that he did not leave Muslims. Otherwise, faceless Serborks demonstrate a very limited set of functions: they know how to cut the heads of the heads, throw them off the bridge, rape pregnant patients of the city hospital and mock the dogs. Their motivation is also elementary: they were told - they do.

Describes all these atrocities of Sakko not without pleasure. In the gas, he was looking for blood in the name of “real” journalism, now the rates have grown, and violence for him clearly becomes the key to the door, on which “Big Literature” is written. Only all because of the same stroke instead of great literature he comes out its complete opposite.

We give one scene. Sakko, in the company of a charming Turkish journalist, comes to visit some half-crazy old man who offers them to buy a video cassette with a record of numerous torture and executions. Hearing the amount requested by the businessman, the journalists run away. In addition, they have already watched a copy of the same cassette in other houses.

Without knowing it, the author of Goraja is in the role of the same old man. A good third of the book is a shock-content, prescribed deliberately carefully-as opposed to the cartoon manner of the main narrative. Here are just all these sketches with tormented naked women, released by insides, trenches full of corpses, cause emotions of the same order as the covers of the albums of graind -sized groups or false blood in cheap horror films. This is just a set of terrible pictures, and not a story created in order to let the reader into himself, to let him live this terrible life, which were doomed to the epicenter of catastrophic war.

It becomes even worse when the Sacco writer tries on a mask, if not a classic, then an outstanding contemporary. Probably the most awkward scene in the entire book occupies two unbearable pages. The conductor Edin, in his free time from the war, working as a teacher at school, he learns that he will be given a salary of boots. Having fairly angry, he goes after a payer to the director. However, the following happens:

“At school, Edin learned that boots for teachers did not act. From time to time I asked him if they brought them. No, he said, he was not yet. Edin never received them. ”

Do not worry, with Edin, by the end of the book, everything will be in order. For some reason, Sakko just decided that it was on such a note that large writers should end their miniatures.

Yes, working on Horage, Sakko realized himself as a writer and, apparently, began to be contemptuous of journalistic work. In Palestine, he talked with dozens of people on both sides of the cyclopic walls, which cut the entire map of that edge. In the "Horage" he completely laveled and therefore hit the information bubble. Gathering evidence, he does not filter them at all and does not pay the slightest attention to the fact that all his adult respondents of the male - direct participants in the fighting, although they are clearly returning to the front line not to protect the herd from wolves from time to time. What can they tell about those people who are obliged to destroy on duty and at the same time try not to be destroyed by them? Hardly something restrained-neutral.

Famous critics hastened to compare the “Mountain” with the “Maus” by Arts Spiegelman. Of course, eminent critics simply do not know any alternative comics, except for Mouse, but a common thought, we think, is clear. However, the problem is not in the obvious tension of this comparison, but in the fact that in the “Horage” Sacco is approaching not to Spiegelman, but to something like a series of propaganda comics, Ted S. Namura “Dictators of the 20th Century”, the first part of which was dedicated to Adolf Hitler, and the second, also the final one, Saddam Hussein. (Of course, we pretty much exaggerate, comparing the honest work of the unconditionally talented sakko with a frank hack, hastily made almost by order of the Pentagon, but we cannot deny ourselves this sadistic pleasure).

Exaggerations of exaggeration, but the offensive truth remains offensive true: Joe Sakko did not have to go to a hot point, from which he barely got out with a humanitarian convoy. To write “Horage: Safety Zone”, he could get comfortable in front of the TV, turn on CNN and throw what he saw in a notebook. At the exit, it would be about the same.